The US approach to the air campaign in Vietnam has always fascinated me, especially considering the aircraft thrown into roles they truly weren't developed for (and the subsequent losses they ultimately suffered).  My question is, by the end of the war how much more effective was the US air approach against soviet air defenses?  The US lost a lot of aircraft to AA fire and SAM's, but this wasn't against a true Soviet integrated air defensive network manned 100% by Soviet personnel.  How much more effective had the US become by the end of the Vietnamese War, and how well do you think it would have fared against a true Soviet air defense network?

Anyone read the book below, looks like it would cover the subject quite well.

US Tactics and Training after Vietnam

Bueller....Bueller....

Anyone?  Anyone?

Didn't we develop the Wild Weasel concept as a direct result of the losses we were taking against SAMs and AAA? I suspect it started out as a stopgap solution that somewhat became doctrinal.

But did we ever find out how effective the concept truly was?

Could have bombed them into the Stone Age, but they could not bomb this, could not bomb that. Couple that with advance warning cease fires. If this was happening today on ARF 90% of GD would be triggered. McNamara and Laird both were useless. Westmoreland famous for not hiring Vince Lombardi at Army speaks volumes. They did not want to win. I remember Rolling Thunder, Linebacker1, Linebacker2 and the Christmas bombings. They dropped more ordnance on VN than Germany and Japan combined but they did not hit anything. You had planes coming from Guam, Thailand, South VN and Yankee Station all headed for nobody knew what. The NVAF, supposedly flown by Russian pilots, could not even be attacked when they went to safe havens, some debacle

We could have won the war but political correct bullshit , flying the same routes and not bombing missiles and AA locations as well as not destroying supplies heading into the country cost a lot of American lives . The gamesmanship played by Military management and politicians doomed America to failure . A good example is troop counts . You did not count until you were in country 90 days . I have a friend who made 13 trips to Vietnam in an under 2 year stretch and never spent more than 90 days . So he never was on the troop count . I am sure he is not the only one .

Yeah, much of the ineffectiveness was due to the Washington elites demanding that they be the one calling the plays. Politicians who had never worn a uniform. Johnson, and assholes like MacNamara, may he rot in hell, who forced unwanted equipment on the services and killed things they really needed. Had the Generals on the ground been allowed to unleash their forces, the damn thing would have been over, decisively, in months.

We never lost a B-52 till the bombing of Hanoi in 72' due to poor flight planning.  Flights flew the same route, altitude .  Vietnam just launched a barrage of Sams in the general direction and were bound to hit something.    losses of fighter aircraft to sorties flown were not too bad considering the number missions.  You tube has some interesting videos look for B-52, sam missiles,  Vietnam war.

I've watched a decent amount on Youtube, but its hard to get a feel for how effective US air power would have been against an integrated (and coordinated) Soviet air defense.  I guess the question is, how much did the US really learn from the air losses in Vietnam?

Does this remind anyone else of that german guy in 1943? When politicians play soldier the result is always the same. Afghanistan, Iraq and today ISIS. More blood and treasure to stoke the egos of the political elite.

The North Vietnamese were trained by Russian and other Warsaw Pact advisors in both Air Defense Systems, as well as fighter aircraft.

The mainstays were the SA-2, AAA, MiG-17, and MiG-21.

They were a very dedicated, motivated, determined adversary who truly believed in Vietnamese independence.

Vietnam is where we saw SAMs really come into play, and the resulting countermeasures to them like Radar Warning Receivers, Wild Weasels, the introduction of the F-111A taking a low-level nap of the earth approach to deep penetration, and re-vamping of our Fighter Weapons Schools to include dissimilar WVR A2A combat in both the Navy and USAF.

The problem with Wild Weasels was that the main Anti-Radiation Missiles of the time, the AGM-45 Shrike, were limited in range and seeker capability, so the Navy took a SAM of their own and converted them to AGM-78 Standard ARM.

The USAF originally used F-100F Super Sabres in the Wild Weasel role, but that airframe was not well suited to it due to speed limitations.

The F-105F converted to F-105G became a Wild Weasel staple for a while, with the AGM-78 and Shrikes being carried as a pretty typical load-out for WW missions.




Some F-4C's were upgraded to Wild Weasel configuration since the -105s had gone out of production, and a lot of -105s were lost in Vietnam (F-105 Combat Losses in Vietnam).

The WW F-4Cs had issues with integrating the EW/WW suite, but eventually were deployed to Vietnam for Linebacker II in December of 1972, flying 460 missions, but the F-105G was really the Wild Weasel workhorse of the Vietnam conflict.

The lessons learned from about a decade of flying against Soviet SAMs and radar-guided AAA went into the F-4G, which was introduced in 1975 to the 3 main WW bases in the world, which were George AFB right near where I'm from, Spangdahlem AB in the Federal Republic of Germany, and Clark AFB in the Philippines.

The F-4G was a modification of the F-4E, after they had jumped through a lot of hoops to try to fit everything in the F-4C and F-4D airframes.  The F-4E was well-suited because they could pack the Radar Homing And Warning equipment into the gun nacelle under the elongated nose of the F-4E, once the gun was pulled out.

The F-4G could also carry and employ the ARM, whereas the F-4C and D were limited with the Shrike.





The lessons learned from the Shrike and ARM went into a purpose-built missile called the AGM-88 HARM, which is currently in the AGM-88E Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile (AARGM) evolution, still incorporating lessons-learned from enemy radar systems from Vietnam through Yugoslavian and Middle Eastern conflicts.





One tactic the enemy learned to use against the Shrike early in the mid 1960s was to simply shut off their radars, then go active again and continue painting.  This defeated the Shrike since it was a continuous radar emission homing system.  The Standard ARM developed by the Navy incorporated a countermeasure to this tactic, so that switch-off wouldn't cause a loss of target location, and the ARM would continue to track to the target origin even without an emission source.  The latest AGM-88 AARGM has at least 2 additional counter-countermeasure systems.

The evolution of warfare during Vietnam in the aspects that you asked about are very much relevant even in the present day.  We're a few generations ahead in countermeasures and counter-countermeasures, and the AGM-88E will be used by the F-35 as well.

Cool, one of my good friends fly's F-16 "weasels" out of Spangdahelm. He said shooting the HARM is like launching the space shuttle off your wing.

I've researched the air campaign of the Vietnam war since I was a kid and I came to the conclusion that we came into it trying to fight it as we would have in WW2 and the presumed idea of World War 3 in Europe as well.  We came out of it with a different perspective and honed razor sharp.  This is evident from Desert Storm.  The four stars who ran ODS were the young LT's and Captains of Vietnam.  Top Gun and Red Flag dame about because too many fine young men met their end prematurely over North Vietnam due to morons like LBJ and McNamara.  

An analogy a friend of mine made when he transitioned from the F-4D to the F-16C, "The F-4 will come along and turn you into big bloddy chunks, the F-16 will come along and turn you into finely shredded strips."  To me that also sums up our airpower efforts in Vietnam and later campaigns.  

If you want to read a damn good book about the air campaign over North Vietnam and how the Wild Weasel came about read Dan Hampton's book The Hunter Killers.  Its one of the best out there.

In less than 24 hours they could have destroyed the NVAF, the SAM sites, the AAA, the power grid, the media, the post offices, the port of Haiphong, and all the airports. But they left that all standing. They could have destroyed the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos, the CIA had sensors to monitor movement so they gosh darn well knew exactly what was going on. You can ask veterans and they will tell you they were facing NVA tanks around 1972-73

USAF Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment

"Clashes" is a pretty good reference as well.

Air to air fighter tactics evolved considerably.

Low altitude vs. a mass small arms or automatic weapons threat was problematic, and that risk is there.

High altitude stuff was an electronics warfare issue, and that evolved over time,one side, then teh other gaining different advantages, as EW tends to.

I think the Arab Israeli wars provide a good example of the relative technological advantages as well.

When you choose to neither a) bomb enemy airfields or b) interdict supply routes, you hamper yourself considerably.

Destroying the North Vietnamese Air Force on the ground would have cut losses, cut MiG CAP requirements to zero.

Mining Haiphong earlier and destroying key railheads could have cut off the ammunition resupply and starved the SAM batteries.  IIRC this is exactly what happened in 1972.

It's one of those Cold-War "what ifs?" that we thankfully never got to see play out.  There are countless others.  

The "closest" we probably got to see was Desert Storm... a large and relatively sophisticated air defense network full of Soviet equipment and doctrine got systematically and ruthlessly annihilated by end-of-Cold-War-era Western forces.

I read a book about wild weasels in Iraq and they were effective but you have to assume equipment and tactics improved.  I bet they did a lot of learning the hard way in vietnam.

There was some documentary I watched and I read a book stating that Hungarian Air Defense personnel served in North Vietnam.

Thanks for the link!

It wasn't actually a total soviet level IADS, but pretty close and mostly manned by Warpac Personnel for the high tech stuff. Consider however that the bulk of the missiles used were older SA-2's and the Soviets were using SA-3-9's at that same point in time. So it was a decade out of date IADS network and it still did good bit of damage to the USAF...

Yup, Czechs, Poles and Germans too. Kommunism was international Komrade...

During Desert Storm the Weasels shut down the Iraqi air defense network with well less than 10% of anticipated losses.

Most of the Iraqi IADS was at least a decade or more out of date. And did you consider it was manned by.... Iraqis?

Look at air combat losses in Vietnam.  Specifically fast movers.

Then get back to us.  It will answer a lot of questions on NVA air defenses.

Losses have a lot to do with mission planning as well. Fly the same route package everyday and even the dimmest AAA grunt will start to clue in. Robin Olds pulled off a pretty slick bait and switch with great success.

MPD165

The propaganda pictures show peasants running to man their AA guns but reality was that the important parts of the North's air defense network was built and ran by  thousands of Russians,Czechs and Poles. Not wanting to kill them was actually a factor in how the air war was conducted.

I imagine all sorts of WaPo, Chinese and nK folks rotated through.

I always knew the Washington Post was fighting for the enemy.

Good stuff here...  Read Dan Hampton's book "The Hunter Killers" about Wild Weasels in Vietnam - it is a good, entertaining read.

There were a lot of bombs dropped in Vietnam but many of them were not directed at significant targets.  Since Vietnam was neither WWII Germany or Japan there wasn't a significant industrial base to strike.  The vast majority of their supples and equipment was imported from China and the Soviet Union.  Not until late in the war did we strike at the harbor in Haiphong and I don't think we ever went after the couple fighter bases they had.  If you read many of the books written by pilots of the era there is a ton of angst about sacrificing friends for no results...

In the Linebacker campaigns the gloves came off.  We blockaded Haiphong with mines and over a couple days the North fired pretty much all their SA-2s and we had unrestricted ability to strike anything at will.  It eventually brought all the parties to the negotiating table in Paris.  

Good books to read:
The Hunter Killers: The Extraordinary Story of the First Wild Weasels, the Band of Maverick Aviators Who Flew the Most Dangerous Missions of the Vietnam War - Dan Hampton
Thud Ridge: F-105 Thunderchief Missions Over Vietnam - Jack Broughton
When Thunder Rolled: An F-105 Pilot over North Vietnam - Ed Rasimus
Palace Cobra - Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds - Christina Olds
American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day - Robert Coram
Pak Six - Gene Basel

I realize I'm a bit heavy on USAF so I'd love any suggestions on USN aviation history of Vietnam...

My you know a lot. If those sensors worked so well why did we have Project Omega ....???

I had friends who worked with those sensors .... they had no confidence in them what so ever.


The Norrh Vietnamese had a well trained and equipped military.  They were not pushovers.

Once Nixon removed all restriction we bombed them into smithereens, took apart their AAA network, and forced them to the peace table because we were taking their industry apart and closed their harbors with mines.

LBJ is the one who screwed up the air war in 'nam. He sat there with his shitkickers on his desk picking this target out or that based on potential political fall out. He never allowed the bombing of the North. This changed with Linebacker-II under Nixon and had Nixon stayed in office its very likely SV would be free right now cause the little yella Reds in the north were scared shitless of Nixon and his airplanes and they never would have dared to violate the terms of the cease fire and invade again.

I read once that in 1965 the North fired about 50 SA-2s for every aircraft shot down by that system.  By 1972, they were firing about 100 SA-2s for every aircraft shot down.

Linebacker hit plenty, but it didn't matter because we packed up and went home immediately afterward.

Take it down, Take it down, is heard regularly on old tapes.

I remember reading (as a kid in the 70's) that the Roooshins were PISSED about the miserable

performance of the SA-2 (As used by Hanoi) during the Christmas bombings.



The missile crews were firing them "blind" in most cases because they were afraid of catching an ARM or Shrike or

a nice bunch of cluster munitions.  F-A-N  S-O-N-G spells "kill me"



 

Those sensors worked better than the McNamara Line

I bet they fired so many of those SAMs that went nowhere and just killed people on the ground

That's the tired old bullshit Praetorian Critique.  We lost because we can't successfully fight insurgencies.  Its a cultural thing.  See the works of Collin S. Gray, Jeffrey Record, Andrew Krepinevich, etc.  Hell, even David Petraeus wrote about it back in the mid-1980's.    

Under direction of Soviet advisers, but ran by NVA personnel mostly. It's all ancient history now, there are plenty of memoirs. Also, "thousands" is an exhaggeration IIRC, at least for the people that were directly involved with running NVA ADN at any one time. IIRC it was "hundreds" or even "tens" depending on the period.

We advertised the route , altitude, and time at least 24 hours in advance to "avoid civilian casualties"

Just avoiding that would have made us 10x more effective.

The really dangerous stuff is terminally guided, i.e. missiles.  My Dad got reprimanded several times for flying to low to stay under the SA-2 umbrella on Wild weasel missions.  He flew 468 combat missions in an F-4.  only scratch he had besides tree limbs was a single small arms round in Horizontal stab.
His strategy was 500 knots at 500 feet AGL.

I have no reply or answer.

So here's a gratuitous picture taken from the ground of my best buddy flying a close air support mission based out of Chu Lai in 1967.

You made no mention of LBJ.

The advance notice of targets and times given to the North Vietnamese by the US Government negates a lot of the assumptions presented.  If you know when and where the aircraft are going, and they are restricted to the routes dictated by Washington, then it's more properly known as an ambush.  

G

Its crazy when you think about it, could have been even more losses in the air...

The only guy that had an idea was a guy named Vann, he was even ostracized, mocked and ridiculed

Lots of people did not get mentioned, LBJ, Abrams and Fulbright

I think the whole concept of how things were done under LBJ was insanity, treasonous really.

He was one of the worst human beings in US political history, even before he got to the WH.

He surrounded himself with brown-nosers who would do his bidding without thinking much.